In my life, I struggled with few books as this one. It was an odyssey: some chapters are so banal that scarcely are a 3/5; others are so superb and wildly imaginative that a 6/5 is not enough. This is a book about dreams and nighmares, written with the most beautiful prose of recent years. Cartarescu is someone that knows language, and uses it at its best in every single line. He draws things from pop culture, form art, from everyday life... and from the reader. At the beginning I hated this book not knowing why... and later I realized that I hated it because I wanted to write like that. Cartarescu wrote like if he knew me. I could reflect into what he wrote, like if it was a mirror built form my soul. I hated and loved it.